Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Has the medical profession lost its human touch?

This evening, we'd gone to Rani, a friend of ours, to offer our condolences. She's lost her 85 year old mother.

The old lady, apparently, had no major problems and her vital organs were in sound shape. Last week, she'd complained of a lack of appetite and had restricted herself to having only fluids. After trying out the usual home remedies that didn't yield tangible results, they'd decided to take the old lady to the nearby hospital which has 5 star facilities! After the initial check up and detecting nothing, the doctors attending on her decided to rule out the possibility of 'meningitis' and accordingly, tried to extract the fluid from her spinal chord (A friend of mine in the profession, has said that this exercise is never to be resorted to on a heart patient - that the old lady was - and her age should have also been factored in).

And that was the game changer, the old lady never recovered from her subsequent coma and was, consequently, hooked on to a ventilator. After a couple of days, she was taken off the life support system -  again a unilateral decision taken by the hospital authorities, without taking the consent of the family! More ignominy was to follow. The family was asked by the staff to remove the numerous tubes and attachments on the old lady citing - now, hold your breath because this is the most intriguing part of the sordid drama - that they would not do it because anything could go wrong in the process!

Which meant that the intricate task of removing the tubes and attachments, put in place by the trained hospital staff, was to be done by the agonising family members at their own risk! A perfect case of adding fuel to the proverbial fire! And for the five day ordeal, the family was fleeced a sum of Rs.2.75 lakhs.

Is this what the common man must expect when he approaches hospitals? Where is the ethics? What about bedside manners? Have all these been given the go by? Has the medical profession lost its human touch?

This is the sad story of an elderly lady who walked into her car, from her house, to go for a medical check up to find a remedy for her lack of appetite only to return lifeless, five days later.

RIP, Rani's amma. My humble prayers. And may god give Rani and her family the strength to tide over these stressful times!


Tailpiece.

We're at their place a couple of months before and it turned out to be a musical evening. I'd tried my hand at singing a few evergreen Malayalam movie songs. Rani's amma was very appreciative of my efforts and insisted on me sitting next to her at the dinner table, so that she could know more about me. Little did I know then that it was gonna be the last time that I'd be interacting with her!

PS.
I'd like to believe that the incident that I've narrated above is an aberration. I'm sure that the majority in the profession are dedicated and strive to serve the people who arrive at their doorstep for succour! But we need to take care of those erring few!!

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